The other group of thanages forms the southern part of Mearns, and extends from the Grampians to the sea. The most westerly are those styled the thanages of Kyncarden, and consist of those of Kyncarden, Fettercairn, and Aberbuthnot. These three thanages, with the park of Kyncardyn, the castle and the _Cans_ of the same, appear in 1359 as in the hands of the Earl of Sutherland by royal concession.[343] Kincardine was from an early period a royal seat, and Robert the First confirms to Alexander Fraser six arable acres in the tenement of Auchincarie adjoining the royal manor of Kincardine. It embraces the greater part of the parish of Fordun, and as we find in it the name of Kinkell, there may probably have been a chief church corresponding to the name of Kincardine, as the same term of Kinkell did to Kintore. The thanage of Fettercairn is co-extensive with the parish of that name, and contained in it lands called the Thanestone, that of Aberluthnot with the parish of Marykirk. How these three thanages became converted into feudal baronies has already been noticed. On the west side of Fettercairn was the small thanage of Newdosk, which once formed a parish, now united to Edzell. Among the notices of missing charters is one by David II. to Ronald Chene of the thayndom of Newdoskis, and in 1365 he grants to Sir Alexander de Lyndesay all his lands in the thanage of Newdosk, to be held as a free barony.[344] On the west side of Kincardine was the important thanage of Aberbuthnot, now Arbuthnot. It contained twenty-three townships, beside the kirkton or church land of Arbuthnot. This thanage appears originally to have been co-extensive with the parish of Arbuthnot, and to have been broken up by King William the Lion, who grants the lands of Altrethis, now Allardyce, to the ancestor of that family, and the thanage itself to Osbert Olifard the crusader, while the lands of Kair, consisting of four townships, and those of Inchbreck, appear as separate possessions. The entire parish appears to have contained fifty-four ploughgates of land, giving an average of two ploughgates or a half davach to each township; but in the eighteenth century the separate possessions consisted of fourteen farms of two ploughgates each, twenty-two of one ploughgate, five of half a ploughgate, and six of a quarter ploughgate or husbandland.[345] This is probably a fair enough picture of how the land had been occupied in older days by the different classes of its possessors, and if the ploughgate in the main represents the Welsh _Tref_ the entire thanage in its oldest state was the equivalent of the Welsh _Cymwd_.